


Grit Your Teeth, Pull Your Hair

by ughineedcoffee



Series: The Runt of the Litter [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Family, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Little Sisters, Soulless Sam Winchester, Winchester Sister
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:01:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28865199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ughineedcoffee/pseuds/ughineedcoffee
Summary: Twelve-year-old Anna is sick as a dog. And worse, she's beginning to think something is really wrong with Sam. Thank God they have a Dean.
Series: The Runt of the Litter [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112966
Kudos: 18





	1. Break Us Down

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for the kudos and comment! I really appreciate it <3  
> The title of this story, "Grit your teeth, pull your hair," is a line from the song "Missing You" by All Time Low.  
> I'll post chapter two tomorrow (which is more of a sequel than a to be continued, but whatever), but I'm new to posting here, so I may have to do some troubleshooting to get the formatting right.  
> Anna is twelve years old.

She woke up late and was groggy. She felt like there was a film over her eyes, making it harder to interact with the world. Looking around her, she saw that the boys had already gone. There was a note on the table, so she crawled out of bed, shivering in the cold of their motel room. The thermostat was probably broken-- they usually were in these places-- and it was below freezing outside. She shivered and ran across the dirty and frigid motel room floor in her bare feet to get to the table.

The note said simply: _Working the case. Eat breakfast and stay put_.

Anna sighed and looked at the takeout container that had been on the table next to the note. She wasn't hungry. She hadn't really had much of an appetite since Sam's descent, and even before that there'd been times when she had to be coaxed into eating, namely during the time Dean spent in Hell and the subsequent unrestful months in which Sam conspired with Ruby and Dean with the angels. She set the note down and flipped the container open. French toast, a couple sausage links, and a small container of syrup. Normally, it would have been an enticing breakfast, but this morning, it only turned her stomach. She sighed, knowing she would have to eat or face an interrogation and subsequent lecture from her brother later. But she could put it off for a little while.

Skin coated in goosebumps, Anna hurried into the bathroom. There were four nearly threadbare towels there, and she turned the water nearly as hot as it would go, which was surprisingly hot for a rundown motel like this one, and got in the shower. She stayed there for nearly twenty minutes, relishing in the warmth before the hot water abruptly ran out. She wrapped herself hastily in a towel and practically ran to her duffel bag, throwing a long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants onto her bed to change into along with a pair of cotton socks.

Once she'd dressed in those clothes, she found that she was still shivering with cold, teeth chattering audibly. She hated the shaky feeling she had from the inside out, her skin prickling sensitively in the freezing room's air. And she was still _exhausted_ despite having just woken up, her eyes feeling glazed over with fatigue. All this wasn't to mention the headache building behind her eyes.

Anna sat on her feet on the floor in front of Sam's duffel, digging through until she found a hoodie in the bottom of the bag. She'd rarely seen him wear his sweaters since his return from Hell. It was one of the many things that had changed about her brother. In fact, enough had changed in Sam that Anna sometimes still felt like she was mourning the loss of her big brother. As she slipped into a huge Stanford University hoodie and let the sleeves cover her hands and the hood swallow her head, Anna felt a little closer to the version of Sam that still seemed lost to them. She glanced at the breakfast on the table, but she felt nauseous at the thought of eating and decided to just go back to bed where she buried herself in blankets.

Sometimes, the motel rooms they stayed in had TVs or other means of entertainment, but this one was barren. So, Anna had coveted Sam's laptop and curled up with it in bed, cozy but still feeling chilled from the inside out.

Nearly two hours later, she jerked awake to a hand on the side of her face. The laptop in front of her sported a blank screen, having gone to sleep after the movie she'd put on ended. "Wh'appen?" she mumbled in sleepy urgency, fumbling to sit up. She was tangled in blankets and sweating up a storm, though, and it didn't really work.

"Just me, kiddo," came the reassurance from above her, and Anna didn't even bother trying to sit up once she'd heard Dean's voice. She just relaxed back into the bed and let her heavy eyelids slide shut. Her stomach felt unsettled as it had earlier and was beginning to hurt now too. All in all, sleeping just sounded better than being awake at the moment.

"Hey," she heard and opened her eyes again. Dean was frowning down at her, and after a second of studying her, their eyes locked on one another in a quiet, simple moment, he moved the laptop to the foot of the bed and sat down in its place beside her. "Was gonna ask what you're doin' in bed, but it's pretty obvious you've got a fever." He laid his palm on her forehead again. "How the hell did that happen?" he said more to himself than to her.

Anna gave a lazy shrug and blinked drowsily. Her eyes felt like there was a woodstove behind them, heat radiating through white and green as she looked up at her brother. "Woke up like this," she grumbled, then started shifting again, suddenly feeling stifled by the layers she'd wrapped herself in earlier. "It's hot," she huffed, and Dean pursed his lips, helping her pull the blankets to the foot of the bed.

"That's what happens when you animorph into a burrito, Anna."

"Animorph," Anna repeated, her sluggish brain not understanding. She wasn't sure if she would have even understood that if she _hadn't_ had a fever though. "What is that?"

Dean squinted, but seemed to fall short of coming up with an answer. He shrugged disinterestedly. "I'm gonna get you some Tylenol, but you're gonna need food- And don't argue with me," he added sternly, predicting the protest Anna had been ready to voice. "We probably have crackers or something, but you have to eat."

Anna watched miserably as Dean moved away from the bed and toward the other side of the motel room. She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes and rubbed at the itchy heat there. Swallowing against her stomach pain and nausea, she curled up tighter in bed. She hoped that the nausea and pain was a result of hunger and that eating would make it better, not worse. At the same time, she very much wanted to just go back to sleep.

The door to the room opened and clicked shut, and Anna raised her head to see where Dean was going, but instead she saw Sam walking in. He was wearing his FBI suit and loosening his tie as he moved through the room. "Uh... what are you doing?" he asked as Dean passed him holding a box of crackers and a cup of water.

"What's it look like?" Dean asked tersely, and it quickly became clear to Anna that he was pissed over something. And because he was being so good to her, she knew it was specifically something to do with Sam, which was nothing new. He'd been strangely cautious about their brother-- even in his elation over Sam's return-- because there were some clear differences in Sam's behavior these days compared to the way he'd been before. "Anna's sick."

"Oh," Sam said and turned awkwardly to watch as Dean set the food and water on the bedside table and then placed a pill in Anna's hand.

She curled her fingers around it and let him help her sit up, feet still tangled in the rest of the blankets on the bed. A few baby curls stuck to her forehead and cheeks with the sweat of her fever, but all she could focus on as Dean helped her sit against the headboard was the way Sam stood there, body language tensely locked and yet somehow clumsy. She forced herself to look away when a glass of water was pressed into her other hand.

"Take that, and then you can get some food down and go back to sleep, alright?" Anna nodded along to the calm instructions and swallowed the Tylenol down with a few gulps of water. Her nausea didn't really get any worse with the addition of the medication, so she saw that as a promising sign, though she still felt sick enough not to have any real desire to eat. Still, when Dean handed her a sleeve of Ritz crackers, she started working at pulling the plastic open, irritated by how difficult it was. As he stood up, Dean placed his hand on her head affectionately for a moment before turning away and walking toward the table. "What?" he asked, and Anna looked up to see him looking at Sam looking at her.

Maybe usually she would have repeated the question for herself, but she just felt exhausted, and the chills she'd experienced earlier that morning were making a return. So, instead, she got onto her knees to collect the covers from the foot of the bed and snugly cover her legs lower half with them.

"Nothin'," Sam answered, a surprisingly normal-- or at least casual-- reply. "I'm sorry you're sick, Ladybug," he added, sounding just enough like himself for it to be sweet rather than weird.

Anna smiled drowsily at him, cheeks pink, eyes bloodshot and drooping. She nibbled slowly on her first cracker, sinking a little lower so she was only half-sitting up.

Sam dropped his suit jacket over the back of one of the chairs at the table and retrieved his laptop from the foot of Anna's bed. "I'm gonna see what time the morgue closes. We should hit it this afternoon."

Dean sent him a strange look. "You... right now?"

Sam looked up from his computer screen with an expression of confusion. "Well... We could wait until after lunch if you're... hungry or something."

"Sam, I'm not leaving Anna here by herself when she's sick. Are you nuts?"

"Oh," Sam said in a moment of what seemed like genuine realization. "Right. Yeah. Of course. Well, I can go."

"You- you want to go to the morgue by yourself?"

Sam shrugged. "Well, unless you want to come with me."

"Sam, we can put the case on hold for one afternoon," Dean said with some bite to his voice. Anna squirmed a little in bed, blushing as she realized she'd somehow managed to start a disagreement between her brothers. And she hadn't even said a thing. "Nobody's died in almost a week now. We're not even sure if this is our kind of thing yet."

"And taking a look at the body could confirm one way or another if this _is_ our kind of thing," Sam argued with a simple, level rationality that irked Anna almost as much as it seemed to irk Dean. "She's twelve years old, Dean. And if you want to stay here, that's fine. But I don't think she needs both of us holdin' her hand through a fever."

Anna glared at Sam, crossing her arms over her chest and pushing herself into a sitting position with her feet, crackers forgotten atop the covers. "Well, I'm not keeping you here, you douchebag." She slouched back down a little when Dean sent her a sharp look.

But he turned to Sam with a much sharper one. "You _are_ being a douchebag, man."

"Alright, you know what, you're right. I'm sorry," he said. Anna got the feeling that, hard as he was trying to be sincere, he really didn't mean it. "She's a kid, and she's sick, so you stay here with her. But I'm going to the morgue."

"I can stay by myself," Anna announced, face still wound into a frown that almost managed to look more angry than miserable and fatigued.

Much as she knew Sam probably didn't care, she felt as though she was in some sort of necessary standoff with him, as if she had something to prove. Namely, that she wasn't being a baby, that she could be tough like he seemed to think she should be. It was strangely double-sided. In order to prove herself to him, she was going to give in to his insistence that she stay alone rather than telling him to screw off. But she was twelve, and all she could think about was that she didn't want somebody whose opinion she cared about to think she was weak or childish. Nevermind that Sam had been a little colder and harsher, a little strange, and just all around _different_ since he came back. He was still her older brother.

"See what you started," Dean fixed Sam with an irritated look, gesturing back at their sister. "Fine. Go to the morgue. Grab lunch on the way back."

"Yeah, I will," Sam agreed, snatched his jacket off the chair back, and closed his laptop.

As soon as the door had closed behind him, Anna deflated. She stared tiredly at the sleeve of crackers resting atop her blankets and let it show on her face how offended she was that Sam had spoken about her like a wimp. She hadn't _asked_ not to be left alone, so she didn't know why it bothered her so much. Except that... well, she didn't _want_ to be alone, so Sam hadn't been entirely wrong in thinking that she wanted somebody there holding her hand through what was just a little fever. Not literally, of course. Literally, she just wanted Dean _nearby_. Maybe she'd thought they could sit and watch a movie or something because that was what they always did when she was sick, or even when he was. But maybe Sam was right and she needed to grow up. She _was_ twelve years old, after all.

"Don't let him get to you, Rugrat. He's been a real jerk lately."

Anna knew that. She really did. But she still felt shitty, though half of that probably had to do with being sick and overly sensitive. She sighed and picked up the sleeve of crackers, but her stomach still hurt, so she just set them aside again.

Dean's own sigh greeted that, but he didn't push the subject. "You goin' back to sleep?" he asked, pulling a beer from the mini fridge on the other side of the room.

Anna shrugged and listened to the familiar sound of the cap popping off a bottle, a release of pressure and a gasp of air. She watched Dean grab the laptop off the table and kick off his boots. She smiled blearily because they didn't get time like this anymore. Seemed like they were always chasing one terror or another. But when Dean walked around in black socks, popped open beer bottles, and opened Netflix, it was a sure sign of an evening in. And if he was willing to sit and watch something with her and relax without looking at her like a childish wimp, Anna had to believe that it wasn't so dumb or pitiful to get a little clingy when you were twelve years old and sick. She'd always trusted Dean's opinion as much as Sam's... and Sam wasn't quite himself lately.

()()()

The midday dragged slowly into early evening before Sam returned. Anna woke to the sound of the doorknob jiggling to find herself tucked against Dean's side, under his arm, an episode of Bonanza still playing on Sam's laptop. Unconsciously, she cuddled a little closer and felt herself inch closer to dozing again, but the door swung open and she blinked her warm, heavy eyes open. She felt better than earlier fever-wise, but her stomach still hurt, and she felt like she could easily start puking.

"You awake?" Dean's voice rumbled. Anna tilted her head up to look at him, her tired brain slow to process what he'd asked her. "Hate to do this to you, kiddo, but I've had to piss for the last hour, so..." he said and eased himself away from her to stand up. Anna mourned the warmth, curling under her blankets and hoping to return to sleep. She'd barely started to doze again before Sam shook her awake. Anna groaned a little and tried to brush him off, but he was insistent. "You didn't eat this morning, and you can't kick a bug if you don't eat."

Anna frowned. The way he was talking reminded her of someone, but that someone wasn't Sam. She stared at Sam's eyes, dully hazel-brown in the dim lighting of the motel room, and squinted in her fatigue until she realized. Sam sounded like their father. Then she felt guilty for having taken so long to recognize a memory of her own father.

"I got soup," Sam said. "Chicken noodle, not tomato, because the acid would probably exacerbate your nausea."

As he turned away to retrieve the food from the table, Anna tried to quietly repeat the word he'd used. "Egg-sir-bait?" She frowned and shook her head, giving up. Sam used stupidly big words all the time. She wasn't surprised that her sick brain couldn't understand everything he was saying.

Sam handed her a styrofoam container filled with soup and pulled the lid off for her, handing her a spoon. Anna wondered why he wasn't making her get out of bed and sit at the table to avoid making a mess, but she didn't question it. She had no desire to leave the coziness of her bed. The scent hit her with a strange combination of hunger and painful nausea. It smelled good, but it smelled strong. "It's gonna make me throw up," she resisted, only not handing it back to him because he'd already gone back to the table, taking his laptop with him.

Dean walked out of the bathroom, drying his hands on his flannel shirt. "Oh, nice," he said when he saw Anna holding a container of soup.

"Well, if you're so excited, you can have it," she said and offered it out to him, barely managing not to spill any over the sides of the container.

Dean clearly wasn't impressed. "You're a class act, aren't you," he said dryly.

Anna pouted, but won no sympathy and knew that she wouldn't. "My stomach hurts," she complained outright. "Can't I just drink water or something?"

"You need to eat something substantial or you're just gonna get worse," Dean reminded her and handed her a spoon. "Bon appetit."

Anna glared at the soup, realizing that she wasn't going to get out of eating no matter how nauseous she felt or how much her stomach hurt. She started out slow, but found her appetite a few bites in and so began to eat a little faster. Nearly as quickly as her appetite had appeared, it began to wane, and she started to just stir the soup around without eating anymore before it was even halfway gone. Her stomach was twisting and cramping worse with the addition of food, and Anna knew, just _knew_ that she was going to throw up. She abandoned the soup on the bedside table and hurried to the bathroom, getting there just in time to hit her knees in front of the toilet and start spewing what little she'd eaten.

Dean came in after a few seconds, crouching down beside her and holding her hair out of the way with one hand. "It's alright," he murmured, wincing at the sound, smell, and sight of her barfing. It didn't last long, though, and when she was done, he reached over her to flush the toilet and drop the lid, hoping the smell wouldn't travel. "You okay?" he asked gently, moving his hand from the back of her head and trying to get a clear view of her face. Anna knew she must be a sight when Dean cringed at the sight of her face and then reached up onto the counter for a hand towel which he wet and then used to wipe her face off from the nose down. "Your fever's comin' back already," he muttered seemingly to himself, sounding vaguely concerned but so much in control that Anna didn't get scared, just nervous. "You want to take a shower?" he offered.

Anna nodded, but instead of moving to get up, she just fell against him, miserable and hurting, with her face against his shoulder. "This sucks," she grumbled, slightly embarrassed at how childish she sounded.

"Yeah, I know," Dean soothed. He let her stay there for a minute before easing her back and giving her a kiss on the forehead. "I'll get you some pajamas, okay? Just take it easy for a minute." Anna knew she must look miserable when he hesitated before leaving, looking at her with some serious pity in his eyes. She didn't have the energy to buck up and try to look a little better for him, though, so she just wrapped both her arms around her aching stomach and curled up until she found a way that it hurt a little less.

()()()

The morning light warmed her face, and suddenly all of her was burning. She felt hollow in her pain, skin sensitive and covering in goosebumps the moment she threw off the blankets. Her body went from stifling hot to quivering with cold in about a second flat. Anna trudged to the bathroom shakily to take care of business, cringing at the terrible smell leftover from last night. She'd spent half the night stuck in the bathroom, throwing up three more times after the first round. For a while, Dean had been adamant about getting food into her, but he'd given up sometime around ten pm. It was almost worse, Anna had realized, throwing up bile or nothing at all, than it was throwing up half a bowl of soup or a handful of crackers. It hurt more just heaving and heaving as if her body were trying to turn itself inside out rather than empty itself.

For the moment, the nausea was bearable, but it was still there, always there. And her stomach hurt even worse than it had yesterday, feeling less like a cramp now and more like a deep, sharp pain. She crawled right back into bed when she'd finished in the bathroom, and she curled under her blankets, but she was so cold that she couldn't get herself to go back to sleep despite how achy and tired her body was. She realized with a start that Dean was sleeping in the next bed, but that the sofa was empty. At just five in the morning, Sam was already gone. Granted, if any of them should be awake so early, it would be the one who hadn't been up all night in the bathroom, but Anna was pretty sure, if her blurry memory served her, that Sam had still been awake at one or two when she and Dean finally both went to bed.

Sitting up with her blankets wrapped tightly around her shoulders, she looked around the room for any sign of Sam. He wasn't there, though, and she frowned in concern. Where could he have gone so early? Maybe for a jog? She stood up and shivered her way over to the door which she eased open and peeked outside. Sam wasn't anywhere nearby, so she closed the door and turned around to see Dean stirring.

"Sammy's gone," she said, feeling irrationally concerned about this development, enough so to wake Dean even though she knew how late he'd been up last night. Because of her.

In the next second, Dean was leaning up one elbow, one hand discreetly settled underneath his pillow. He saw that it was just Anna, though, and his demeanor changed, his hand coming out from under his pillow. "What's wrong?" he mumbled, squinting in the early morning light filtering through the windows.

"Sammy's gone," Anna said again.

"He's probably gettin' breakfast or something," Dean grumbled, half-asleep again already. "Go back t'sleep."

Anna pursed her lips, slowly coming to accept Dean's response. Sam probably _was_ fine. She'd only thought otherwise even briefly because he'd been so different lately. Out of energy and out of worry, Anna sat down on the floor, the thought of walking back to bed a bit too much, and curled around her hurting stomach again. She didn't know what was going on with Sam, but she was too damn sick to care at the moment. She dozed off shortly thereafter.

The next time she woke, there was a hand on her forehead. She roused enough for a thermometer to be eased into her mouth, and she heard it beep, heard a murmur that it could be worse. She was in her bed, she realized, no longer on the floor. Tylenol and water were coaxed into her, and she woke with sudden urgency a few minutes later to run to the bathroom and throw them up. Then she crawled miserably back into bed where Dean looked sympathetically at her and threw the blankets back over her when she lay there without making a move to do it herself, too tired to put in the effort even though she was shivering with cold.

She woke again an hour or so later. The clock read 11am, and she felt a little more alert, though still nauseous and in a lot of pain, as she uncurled herself underneath the blankets and sat up. Her pain was clear on her face.

"Welcome to the land of the living."

"Sh't up," Anna grumbled, receiving a taken-aback look in return.

"Somebody's grumpy," Dean remarked. Sam raised one eyebrow behind him.

Anna realized quickly that they'd been waiting for her to wake up. It was the only reason they both would've come to the side of her bed immediately when she woke up. "What?" she asked dreadfully.

Dean sighed and let Sam explain, and Anna saw that he looked unhappy about this while Sam seemed unfazed as he spoke. "We got this hunt down pat. Nest of vamps took over a set of hunting cabins a few miles outside of town, and a lot of the victims that went missing a few weeks ago, the ones whose bodies were never found, we think they're being kept there, used as feed-bags. We have to go wipe 'em out, get those vics out of there."

Anna didn't need the long-winded explanation to understand the gist of what she was being told. They were leaving to save some people, which meant she was being left alone for a few hours at least. "Could've just left a note," she said and rolled over onto her side.

"That's what I s-" When Dean shot him a look, Sam cut himself off and his expression grew more sympathetic. "Uh- no, we wanted to tell you before we left so you... um... wouldn't think that we didn't care."

Dean rolled his eyes at the awkward manner of Sam's explanation. "Pretty much," he agreed, though. "There's a package of crackers and a bottle of water on the nightstand. You need to eat something while we're gone. Watch some more Bonanza, take a nap, suit yourself, but just stay put and rest, alright? We'll be back before you know it."

Trying not to dread the moment the door closed behind them and she was left all alone, Anna focused on this moment, stared into Dean's eyes, tried to think of something to say that would take that guilty look out of his eyes. She didn't get that far, though, before she leaned over the side of the bed to grab the trash can and puke her guts out.

It was only five or so minutes later that the boys left with another promise to be back soon.

Anna settled in, curled tightly around her stomach, which only hurt more and more every time she woke up. On the laptop in front of her, Little Joe and Hoss picked mesquite beans, caught wild geese for dinner, and basically got into their usual mess of trouble. But she still felt jealous. Those two would get home to a big, warm, cozy house before long, and Anna was trapped in this itchy, icky motel, her stomach alight with pain, for the unforeseeable future. Not to mention the inevitable breaking point Sam would reach sometime in the near future. She could feel it coming because they hit breaking points so often.

And with that thought, she reached one herself, and her tears melted into the blanket the way Little Joe's mesquite beans had hit the snowy surface of the ground and sunk into the surrounding white, their meager food blending into the subject of their doom.

Her cold hands slipped under her shirt and pressed hard against her stomach. It hurt worse than she'd ever felt it hurt before, and without somebody standing there, promising her that it was okay, Anna found such a sentiment difficult to believe. Still, she grasped onto it. And as Hoss tried to shake some sense into his little brother on screen, Anna hugged her arms tighter around her stomach and tried to do the same to herself, whispering, "It's fine. I'm fine. It's just a stomachache. It's fine. I'm fine."

When the boys came back as the sun was setting, Anna tried not to cry in relief. And when Dean told Sam to stay with her while he went out to get some supplies-- since Anna was clearly not getting better anytime soon-- she tried, once again, not to cry, but this time out of misery. Sam wasn't right. He wasn't _right_ , and that thought ran almost hysterically through her mind as she tried not to cry at the sound of the door latching shut behind Dean. She was successful both times at not crying, but not by much.

Sam sat on the side of her bed for a moment after she ran to the bathroom, threw up, and then crawled miserably back under the blankets and unpaused another episode of Bonanza, this one called Vendetta.

"It'll be okay," she mouthed, not even whispering the words anymore. "It's okay. I'm fine." But she curled tighter and tighter into a ball, until she couldn't move any further into herself, but at least her pain felt properly bound within her, chained into its proper place.

"I'm fine," she whispered, needing to hear the words just once.

()()()

She wasn't fine. What had once seemed like a vague but sharp pain had become a fire burning distinctly over the right half of her stomach, and Anna could barely distinguish anything beyond that pain. Her senses honed in on it, and before she'd even come fully awake, she was whimpering with it.

Her breathing grew erratic almost immediately. "Sammy!" she cried on a plea. "Sammy," she whimpered again when he didn't reply. If her eyes hadn't been squeezed so tightly shut, she'd have seen sooner that the room was empty. But, as it were, it took her nearly a minute of agonized whimpering to give in and force them open. And then she saw, and her face crumpled in misery. "Sam!" she begged anyway, fully aware of how irrational she was being. There was, of course, no reply, though.

a

Releasing a pathetic sob, Anna forced herself to move, and froze again almost immediately when the pain dialed up even higher at the slight change in position. Her next few breaths were shuddered through a wide open mouth as she tried to get through the shock of how painful this was. How could a stomach bug have gotten so severe so quickly?

"Dean," she whispered, not a cry this time, but an idea. She pushed herself to her hands and knees, her breathing breaking in and out of keening as she tried not to scream at how badly her stomach hurt. There was something very, very wrong with her, and the thought made her burst into real, sloppy tears as she dug into the pocket of her jacket, hung on the bedpost. She dropped her thumb onto Dean's name and hit speaker phone immediately after. The phone fell to lay on the mattress beside her head, and Anna curled tightly around herself again. It didn't help anymore. The pain just punched at her, demanding her attention and giving her not a single moment of respite.

" _Anna?_ "

"It hurts really bad, Dean. I think something's wrong." And well, at least the words had come out somewhat coherent, because she hadn't even tried to sound less terrified than she was, and every ounce of her panic had come out clearly.

"Wha-? Woah. Alright. Everything's alright, Anna, I promise. So just- just calm down."

"No, it hurts!"

"What hurts? Your stomach?"

"Yes," Anna said as if the word had been punched out of her. She sniffled and curled in on herself as tight as she could, but nothing got better. "Help me," she begged.

"Hey. Hey. It's alright," Dean said so calmly that Anna knew he must be freaking out. "Where's Sam?"

"I don't know," Anna said in a rushed, short breath. "Not here. It- it hurts, Dean, it hurts. Make it stop," she sobbed.

"Okay, okay. I need you to listen to me, okay? I'm ten minutes away right now even if I break every speed limit between the two of us, and believe me, I'm gonna do it. But I need you to hang up and call an ambulance."

Maybe the word ambulance should have been the scariest part of that sentence, but for Anna it was the words "hang up," which meant she would be letting Dean go long enough to call somebody else. "No," she argued without hesitation.

"Anna, there could be a serious problem right now, so you hang up on me, and you call an ambulance."

"No!" she argued again, this time more frantic about it. She uncurled herself slightly and picked up the phone. "No, I can wait. I can..." she just breathed for a moment, and she could hear him doing the same. It hurt almost as bad as her stomach did, because as good as Dean was at making his voice sound level and calm, he couldn't force his breathing into line when his heart was racing in his chest, and Anna could hear how fast he was breathing through the phone. Probably that was because he had the phone gripped tight to his face. "I'm scared," she admitted more softly into the phone, as if that had been clear since the moment Dean picked up.

"I know. I'm coming. I'm coming," Dean soothed, and Anna could have sworn she heard Baby's engine roar a little louder in the background. It was a welcome sound, and it made her feel bad, though that, too, was dulled by the pain. She was getting reassurances every few seconds, and all Dean would be hearing was the sound of her crying, sometimes whispering another plea for him to hurry or make it stop.

But mostly, it would just be the numb sound of tears hitting a blanket, and the choked whimpering of a little girl trying to take a man's advice and breathe through a nightmare.

It took nine minutes.

Then, green eyes, bloodshot, hands on her face, on her side, examining her stomach, the right side, then wiping tears off her face. Anna's hysteria faded into the pain, and she felt herself numbing, but she could hear Dean cursing and making promises. "Don't, don't, don't," she muttered when he slid his arms under her to lift her off the bed.

"Sorry, kiddo," came the lying calm. "It's alright. I gotcha. I've gotcha."

How that helped, Anna didn't know. But it did, because there was no better alternative. Just this. Just a voice making promises that she trusted would be kept, and arms keeping her afloat on a leather bench seat and in the doorway of an emergency room. Just the whispered repetitions of tests explained as blood was drawn. Just the hand that squeezed hers when the words "emergency appendectomy" filtered in and all Anna could think was _surgery surgery surgery_. Just Dean.

And then just nothing, her world dark and mercifully numb.

()()()

"-the _hell_ were you thinking?" Anna heard when she first woke up, minus an appendix. It took her a moment to come fully around, by which point Sam was trying to defend himself. Both voices were out in the hallway, but they were loud enough to be distinctly heard.

"Dean-"

"No, Sam. Some things just have to come first," Dean shot back. "You used to know that." There was a pause, and Anna thought for a second that whatever this argument was, it was over. But Dean started up again before long. "Whatever's gotten into you lately, it has to stop, 'cause, you know, I'm done pretending you're fine. You haven't been fine since you got back. If you need to talk about something, cry on my shoulder, whatever, then do it. Do whatever you need to, Sam, but stop being a careless dick!"

He sounded angry. About as angry, in fact, as Anna had ever heard him, at least when it came to Sam. And she understood that, because she'd been scared out of her mind when she called Dean, and he'd probably nearly had a heart attack on his way to her, hearing her cry and beg him to help her, to make the pain go away.

"I'm not _careless_!" Sam argued. But he sounded so calm, too calm. "I'm worried about her, Dean. I am. I just didn't know until now. How do you think I felt when I heard that message?"

"I don't know, Sam. How do you think I felt when you didn't pick up the phone? Or better yet, how do you think I felt when she called me scared out of her wits because she was alone and in the worst pain of her life?"

"That's not fair, Dean. How was I supposed to know she had appendicitis?"

"I'm not saying you should have known, Sam. I'm saying you should've been there."

It was quiet for a minute, and Anna hovered in a sleepy state of half-consciousness, pain-free but not numb anymore.

Finally, Sam spoke again. "You're right," he said in that increasingly familiar state of too-calm, too-calm, _too-calm._ "I messed up. It won't happen again. Now can we go in and see her? Because I'm sure we woke her up."

There were no more words, but Anna blinked drowsily at the boys as they entered the room. She was watching at the moment Dean's deep-seated frown melted into an easy, confident smile. "Hey. You look pretty good considering you're down an organ."

Anna smiled lazily at him. "Feel good," she said, and it wasn't a lie until the next second, when Sam sat down on the edge of her bed, took her hand, and started to apologize. It didn't feel all that artificial. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was that, as sorry as Sam may be, it didn't matter that he was sorry. It mattered that he hadn't been there. Not in an angry, bitter, hold a grudge kind of way-- because Anna was always quick to forgive when it came to family-- but because she couldn't pretend it hadn't happened. It meant something, Sam running out to do God knew what while she was sick and he'd agreed to play protector for the night. It meant that he wasn't her brother the way he had been.

Maybe she _should_ have been angry with Sam the way that Dean was, for not being there when she could really have used his help. But she wasn't angry at him. She was scared for him, because Sam would have been there unless he couldn't be. She wondered if he was running from something, if he was running from him _self_. She itched absently at the stitches in her side, wincing when she wasn't as gentle as she should have been, but there was a hand there-- Sam's-- to pull hers away from her healing stomach.

Sam hadn't been right since his return but... he'd at least seemed like he might still be Sam. It was getting harder to believe, though, that this was the brother they'd lost, come back to life. Even if it was Sam, it wasn't Sam. Anna felt grief crash over her in the same way it had on an hourly basis for nearly the entire year Sam had spent in hell.

He was right beside her, but he was nowhere to be found. She had him, but she missed him, or at least the part of him that had yet to come back.

_tbc_


	2. Build Us Up

Sam knew his sister well enough to recognize the signs that she was coming down with something, even if she was too stubborn to admit to it... and she certainly was that. He woke up well before she did most mornings, but this morning he woke up to see her curled up on the couch watching some old western on the tiny, crappy TV in their motel room. That was sign number one, but he nearly let it slide. It wasn't quite right, after all.

Normally, if Anna felt sick enough that she couldn't sleep well and preferred to get up and sit on the couch watching TV, she woke up either him or Dean first so she could have some company. It was one of many things that still set her apart as the baby of the family, not that Sam considered that a bad thing. He wished more than anything that she would keep counting on him and Dean forever in all those little ways that she did. He would gladly get up at midnight to let her curl under his arm and watch Bonanza reruns. It was a lot easier than taking her to the basement of the local morgue and teaching her what the markings on a dead body meant.

Maybe she'd gotten up by herself because she was getting older and felt embarrassed about waking up her brother in the middle of the night. He didn't know, but he couldn't help but wonder if it was because she only had him right now.

Dean was off helping a couple of hunting buddies wipe out a nest, and he'd left Sam and Anna in Bridgeport where they'd been planning to stay a few more days anyway to make sure that the vengeful spirit they'd just laid to rest was really gone for good.

Sam's relationship with Anna was a lot different than Dean's, and he was fully aware of that. They had a more classic sibling relationship, though he acted every bit like a much older sibling and she every bit like a much younger one. Dean could be a lot like a father where Anna was concerned, and even where Sam was concerned at times but not to the same extent. Sam knew their sister didn't think of him as an authority figure the way she did their brother. He also knew that she respected him a lot more than he deserved given his history. But it was in Anna's nature to believe the best about people she was close to, so it was all he could do to live up to what she needed him to be. He suspected that respect she had for him was the only reason she'd been so agreeable and obedient the last couple days as they waited around without much to do.

Now, he sat in his bed and puzzled over the scene before him. Things had been a little weird all around since he'd woken up not so long ago with over a year of his life completely absent from his memory, a year in which his body had apparently been walking around doing unspeakable things while his soul cooked in hell. It seemed like the hits just kept coming as far as that year was concerned. He was retaining new horrific memories on a regular basis whether from cases coming back to haunt him, Cas spilling too much, or his own scratching at the wall in his head earning him a dribble of a memory leaking over the top of the wall. Things had been weird.

But his family had been a safe haven to all of that. Neither Dean nor Anna was treating him any differently. If anything, Dean had been more suffocatingly protective and caring and Anna more clingy and affectionate than usual. Sam got slowly out of bed and wandered over to the couch in his sleep pants and t-shirt.

"You're up early," he said once he could see that Anna's eyes were open and she was awake.

Anna craned her neck so she could see him and smiled sweetly. "I went to bed early," she said by way of explanation.

Sam nodded and began to reevaluate his whole ridiculous train of thought with a shake of his head. God, he had to stop overthinking everything. She'd been so bored yesterday that Anna had knocked out around nine. Of course she would wake up earlier than usual. And here he was questioning everything over it. "Why don't you get dressed," he suggested. "I'm gonna shower and then we can go get breakfast." He grabbed some fresh clothes from his duffel and headed for the bathroom.

Anna hadn't moved, but she murmured some kind of agreement and he figured she was waiting for the next commercial break or something.

He stepped out of the bathroom ten minutes later, though, to see her still sitting on the couch looking half-asleep. He tossed his old clothes onto his bed and frowned at her. Was she being difficult, or had he been right that she was sick... and why did he feel so out of his league? He knew how to handle either situation.

"Anna," he prompted. Her head popped up. "Breakfast?"

"Oh. Right." He watched her get off the couch and drop her blanket on the cushions. She was still in her pajamas, and she scurried across the room to her duffel quickly. She clearly hadn't made him wait intentionally.

"Do you feel okay?" he asked blatantly, though that wouldn't get him a straight answer under any circumstances.

Anna gave him a sideways look where she was crouched in front of her duffel. "Yeah," she said slowly. "Why?"

"I- You know, you just- Nevermind," he conceded and sat down on the edge of his bed to pull his boots on. He could feel Anna's eyes on him for another minute before she pulled some clothes out of her duffel and disappeared into the bathroom. She walked out with her hair looking a bit frizzy and very messy, but her daily routine to take care of her curly hair usually took at least twenty minutes, so Sam refrained from suggesting that she take care of it now. She also hated it when he tried to micromanage her, and he didn't want to start a fight with her.

Anna was pretty difficult to piss off, but once she got angry she was really hard to get along with or calm down.

He did feel the urge to pull her hair into a bun or a braid like he used to do when she was little and couldn't be bothered to take care of her own hair. He smiled vaguely at the memory. She used to squirm and chatter and whine every morning when he sat her down to do her hair. But he couldn't help but feel like that routine they'd had was part of how they'd managed to grow close so quickly again after he returned from Stanford.

"I'm done," Anna announced, and Sam looked up to see her tucking her shoe laces into the sides of her shoes instead of tying them. He didn't understand why she did that, but it wasn't his place to micromanage, so he didn't.

Clue number two came at breakfast.

They were seated at an actual table instead of a booth at the very back of the diner because Sam wasn't _quite_ as paranoid as Dean about vantage points and possible threats at freaking _breakfast_. When their waiter set Sam's cup of coffee down in front of him, Anna tilted her head at him, seeming to weigh something before asking, "Can I try it?"

"You want coffee?" he snorted. "Black coffee?"

"That's how Dean drinks it," Anna said oh-so-innocently.

Sam suddenly wanted to see her reaction to taking a sip of black coffee, and it couldn't hurt her, so- "Sure," he said. "Why not."

The grin that graced Anna's face almost made him feel guilty. She picked up his coffee cup and blew on it before taking a careful sip of it. She looked thoughtful for only a second before the taste caught up to her and she stuck her tongue out in disgust. "Oh my _god_ ," she groaned and reached for her water glass. "That tastes like butt. He drinks that every day?"

Sam laughed outright at her and picked up a sugar packet from the table to put some in. "I don't usually drink it black either," he admitted. "Not unless I really need the caffeine." Once he'd dosed it up with cream and sugar, he passed it back to his sister. "Try that," he prompted.

Anna looked suspicious, but she took a small sip and her eyebrows popped up. "Wow. That's actually drinkable. What d'ya know?" She smiled broadly and pulled her feet up onto her chair so she could sit on them. It made her a little taller, and Sam knew she liked to sit that way but he also hated when she did it in public. Putting your feet on chairs in public places was rude. He gave her a look, but she didn't notice. She was a little too excited. "You know what this means?"

"What?"

"I'm basically an adult."

Sam shot her a bewildered look, but his mouth twitched with the beginnings of a smile. "Because you tried coffee?"

"Yeah. That's an adult thing," she reminded him and picked up the coffee cup to pose with it. "Do I look older when I hold it?"

It was pretty clear that she felt strongly about this, and Sam didn't want to shoot her down. He knew better than to laugh at her and make her feel bad. But she was being cute. He managed to dilute his reaction to a small amused smile. "At least sixteen," he answered her.

Anna's smile grew and she wrinkled her nose. "I'll take it," she said. "Wow. You know, soon I'm gonna be able to dress up like an FBI agent for cases and get into bars to hustle pool and-"

"Woah- Let's- Let's just slow down, okay? Coffee is one thing. Hustling pool? I hate to break it to you, Anna, but you're not stepping foot in a bar before you're of age."

Anna made a disbelieving face. "You and Dean did."

"Well, we... we grew up differently."

The look on Anna's face said she didn't have a clue what he could mean by that. Sam got it. He did. She was growing up on the road, taking small part in hunts now and then. As far as she was concerned, the only difference between her child and her brothers' was that she did school online and they'd enrolled in a long line of public schools. But their father had made very different rules for them and he'd overall been extremely lax about supervising them. He'd caught Dean once or twice in bars or clubs when he was _very underage_. There was that time in New York and that other time in Pittsburgh. Dean had caught Sam a couple times, but never their father. They'd both been drinking since age fifteen or sixteen, and as far as Dean was concerned, John had been sharing beers with him since he was seventeen.

Anna rolled her eyes and put the coffee cup back down in front of Sam, but not before taking one more sip. He hoped he hadn't started anything. He'd hoped she would at least wait until she was high school aged before she started drinking coffee. He had a feeling she was going to be as much of a coffee addict as he and Dean could be.

Her easy retreat was pretty atypical of Anna. She was hard to piss off, but she was easy to start a debate with because she was stubborn as all get out. Sam noticed there was some color to her cheeks that hadn't been there this morning. It could've been the caffeine, but she hadn't really had enough. His mind started going back to the idea that she wasn't feeling well. With the fade of her excitement, her face had taken on a tired look again.

"Are you sure you feel okay?" he asked before he could censor himself.

Anna shot him a deeply annoyed look. "I'm _fine_ ," she grumbled. "Why would you even ask that?"

This time, Sam didn't doubt himself. He resigned to look for more signs that she might be sick but to do it without constantly asking her how she felt.

He didn't have to wait very long. She was sipping her water more often than she was taking bites of her actual meal. Not to mention, she'd ordered oatmeal. Both were uncharacteristic. Sam deduced that she had a sore throat. The tinge in her cheeks was probably fever, even if it seemed to be low grade based on how talkative she'd been a few minutes ago.

"Can we go back?"

Sam looked up in surprise. He wasn't even halfway through his meal, and neither was Anna. "Can I finish first?"

Anna looked miserable at the request, but she didn't say anything. She stirred her oatmeal with her spoon and looked across the diner absentmindedly. It made him feel a little guilty. If she really was sick, she shouldn't be made to sit in a public place and act like she was fine. But then again, she was old enough to know that she should just admit to feeling badly. She should really learn that nobody could read her as well as she could read herself-- even if Sam and Dean kind of _could_ \-- and she would have to speak up if she wasn't well enough to do something or else she was going to have a miserable time.

Dean would have probably made her stay there for the lesson, or he would have shared that bit of wisdom out loud. But Sam didn't feel equipped to have that conversation with an overtired twelve year old, and he felt too guilty watching her rest her chin on her hand like it was too heavy to stay up on its own. He was probably exaggerating it all in his head. At the worst, she probably had a head cold. One of the families of the victims they'd talked to for this last case had had a cold, so she'd probably just picked that up. But he had no way of knowing for sure that she didn't have some kind of flu or something, and he just plain felt bad looking at her.

"You know, I'm not that hungry anyway," he told her and pulled his wallet out of his pocket. "Just let me go pay and then we can leave."

He'd been expecting her to look relieved or grateful... but Anna looked surprised. It didn't take long for her expression to melt into gratitude, but Sam had seen the shock that preceded it, and it puzzled him. He was known for being a total softie. He caved all the time when Dean wouldn't, usually because he just didn't want to have to get all authoritative on her or because he felt guilty whenever her little face started looking upset in any way. Why would she look surprised when this was so clearly inside the boundaries of his usual pattern?

()()()

Anna stayed curled up on the couch for most of the day, not even questioning where Sam was going when he went to pick up dinner. He'd been hesitant to leave her alone, but she'd yet to admit to being sick and he'd yet to actually confront her about it.

He'd periodically walked over to check on her visually, making sure she didn't look any worse. But every time he went over to check on her, however conspicuous he was being-- there were only so many times in a day that you could get up to use the bathroom with looking a bit suspect-- she would glance sideways at him, looking confused. It had to be obvious to her what he was doing, and she usually had no problems calling him or Dean out when they got smothering. But this time, she just kept looking at him in confusion. It rubbed him the wrong way, the same way the incident at breakfast had.

Sam had decided that if she wasn't any better by tomorrow, he would be ready to officially call her on her bullshit. For tonight, he checked on her one more time before heading out to get some soup to-go from the diner, and was surprised when she didn't immediately question where he was going as he slid his jacket on. In fact, he had his hand on the doorknob and she still hadn't said anything when he finally spoke for himself. "I'm gonna grab some food. You be okay by yourself?"

Anna gave him another weird look. "Yeah," she answered in a strange voice. She sounded as if she didn't understand why he was asking. But she didn't sound indignant like she should have. She didn't remind him that she was _twelve years old_ as if that was _so old_. She didn't even remind him that she _wasn't sick_ and _of course she could stay by herself_.

"Call if something happens," he instructed like always. He still didn't get the usual, annoyed reply of _I know_ or _Nothing's gonna happen_ or, again, _I'm twelve years old. I'll be fine_. At the very least, it was confirmation she was sick, but Sam couldn't leave it at that. He was starting to really believe that there was something off not just with Anna but with their relationship. He felt her eyes on him as he left.

()()()

The ceiling was covered in water stains that were barely visible in the dim light of the motel room. Sam hated the sight of them. He always had. Who wanted the reminder that they were sleeping in an ill-maintained and possibly roach-infested shithole? He leaned over the side of the bed to flick off the lamp, but before his fingers could reach the switch, he caught sight of Anna's sleeping form. She looked so small. She looked young. He flicked the switch on the lamp, and the room went dark.

As he rolled back over onto his back, he realized that his mind hadn't turned off with the lights like he'd secretly hoped.

He felt ridiculous. There was nothing for him to worry about. He was closer with both of his siblings than he'd been in a long time. He just couldn't shake the feeling that something was off here, though.

He ran back through the day in his head and, again, felt a little ridiculous. So, Anna had given him some strange looks and given him some flat answers. She'd also been acting pretty sick all day, and that should have been enough of an explanation as to why her behavior would be a little off.

But no matter how many times Sam told himself that, he couldn't get his mind to turn off. His thoughts kept twisting and running in different directions, inevitably getting away from him no matter how many times he attempted to curb them. It was possible that she just missed Dean. She'd never spent much time away from him except for the four months where- Sam cut that thought off fast. The point was that Anna and Dean were close, and that relationship had probably been further cemented over the time Sam was dead and then the time when he was... not himself.

Not himself. Just like that, Sam understood. Something had to have happened while he was soulless to make Anna think he wasn't the same softie he'd always been. But what? What could he have possibly done to make her think he'd done a complete 180 even _after_ he'd gotten his soul back?

He supposed he should just ask her. But Anna had been as determined as Dean not to let him know about anything that had happened while he was soulless. She was scared for him, and Sam appreciated that coming from both of his siblings. But he kept learning about all these awful things he'd done, and now he had to fear that he'd somehow damaged his sister's trust in him during that year as well.

Would the hits never stop coming? Well, maybe that wasn't the question anymore. Sam was starting to believe he knew the answer to that one. They wouldn't stop coming until that wall came down. And the wall would come down as long as Dean, Anna, or even Bobby had anything to say about it. The new question was whether he would ever be able to make up for everything he'd done. And that question had a more convoluted answer. You make up for one wrongdoing at a time. And some of them are worse than others.

For now, he had to figure out the exact nature of his crime against Anna, and then he could figure out how to mend their relationship. And he _would_ mend it. He had very few people in his life that still believed he was basically good, still trusted him, and still _needed_ him. Anna was one of the two most important people to him. He would prove that to her, whatever he had to make up for.

()()()

Sam woke the next morning to Anna sitting on the edge of the other bed, looking at him. For a second it was weird. Then he noticed the red in her cheeks, the bloodshot look to her eyes, and the blanket she had tightly wrapped around herself.

"I have a sore throat," she told him. "And a headache. And I think a fever."

Sam's foggy, tired mind took a second to catch up, but he registered a feeling of relief spreading through his chest. She was admitting to him that she was sick. Maybe he'd just been overthinking last night. Maybe they were fine. Maybe-

"Can we go to the store? I kinda want orange juice and soup. And I looked but there's no more normal Tylenol in the kit. It's all that super strong stuff, and Dean told me I can't use that for a sore throat and a headache."

Just like that, the relief was gone, replaced by a pang of hurt in his chest. "You called Dean?" he asked, sitting up against the headboard and using both hands to finger-comb his hair back out of his face.

"Yeah, don't worry, he was up. I texted to check first."

"Ladybug, why didn't you just wake me up?"

An expression crossed Anna's face as if she either hadn't thought to do that or she didn't understand why Sam thought she should have. Then her face turned a little regretful. She must have seen the hurt in his eyes. "I don't know," she said quietly, looking down at her blue and green socked feet that barely reached the floor.

It was Sam's turn to feel guilty. Whatever had made her feel like she couldn't come to him, it was on him, not her. "That's okay," he told her gently and threw the blankets off. "We can go to the store. Let me use the bathroom first, okay?"

"Do I have to change?" Anna asked.

Sam knew it was code for _Am I going with you?_ But, in his mind, it was a given that he would take her with him if she was sick. True, it might be a little bit of a miserable trip for her, but he didn't like the idea of leaving his twelve year old sister alone while sick, especially if she was sick enough to actually admit to it. "You can wear your pajamas if you want to," he told her. "Nobody'll mind." The little smile Anna tried to hide made his heart feel lighter in his chest. He needed to have more faith in himself. He knew how to take care of his sister, and if he did that well enough then maybe she would go back to expecting it.

()()()

" _Hey. I'm on my way back now. Man, Sammy, you shoulda seen it. We cleaned the whole nest out in, like, five minutes."_

Sam's eyebrows popped up in surprise, but he wasn't going to admit to being impressed, especially since he and Dean could probably beat that record on their own if speed was what they were after. "Hello to you too," he said tiredly instead.

" _You sound beat. What's up? Is Anna givin' you a hard time?_ "

"No, man, she's sick. I thought she called you this morning."

" _Yeah, I know. I just meant she can be stubborn about meds and rest and crap, and you sound like she's put you through the wringer._ "

Sam shook his head and then realized Dean couldn't actually see him as they were talking on the _phone_. "No, she's been okay, actually. I just... I wanted to ask you something."

" _Hit me_."

"I've been noticing some, um, patterns. I'm starting to think maybe I did something, while I was soulless, and it made Anna think I- I didn't care or something." Dean's silence spoke volumes. "She's just been acting weird ever since she got sick. Dean?"

" _I keep tellin' you not to poke at that wall, Sam. We don't know what it's gonna take to bring the whole thing down, and I just think you're better off not goin' anywhere near it. At all. Period._ "

Sam grimaced at the familiar warning, but he couldn't be deterred so easily. Not this time. "I hear you, Dean. But if I hurt her somehow or-" The thought was physically painful for him. He glanced across the room to Anna. She was sleeping on the far bed, and the TV was still playing an old _Spongebob Squarepants_ episode. "I have to make it up to her. How am I supposed to do that if I don't even know what it is I did?"

" _Sam, Anna will get past it._ " Dean must have heard Sam groan under his breath, even over the phone, because he added," _She will._ "

"Right. And until then?" The line went quiet. "Dean, she keeps giving me these confused looks every time I do anything for her. And she keeps expecting me to leave her by herself or make her take care of herself. What the hell did I do?"

" _It wasn't you Sam._ "

"Fine," Sam allowed, because there was simply no arguing with Dean about that detail. "But what happened?"

He could feel Dean's hesitation across miles. But after a moment, there was an answer forthcoming. " _Robot Sam could be a dick. You know that. But, look, if I tell you this, you leave it at what I tell you. You don't go scratching at the wall trynta remember. Is that clear?_ "

Sam didn't hesitate to agree.

" _Guess it's about time you knew Anna's out an appendix anyway._ "

Sam's heart skipped a beat. "She got appendicitis?" She _was_ in the age group most likely to come down with it, but he wouldn't have seen it coming anyway. How _convenient_ that it would have to happen during the time he was soulless. "When?"

" _It wasn't shortly before we figured out what was wrong with you. That you weren't_ you _. Anyway, we were on a hunt. We thought she just had a stomach bug. Robot You was being kind of a dick the whole time she was sick. Basically just calling her a baby and stuff like that. Which, you know, she hates._ "

If this was the lighter part of his crime, Sam suddenly wasn't so sure he wanted to hear the rest. After all, that explained why she was confused to see him willing to nurse her through this bug. If he'd been a dick last time she was sick, why would she believe this time would be any different... even if he _did_ have a soul now.

" _I, uh, I went on a supply run. Left her with soulless you, and... I get a phone call. She woke up. Alone._ " Sam's stomach twisted into a tight knot. He'd left her alone. While she had appendicitis. " _And in a lot of pain._ " He could only imagine her terror. She was twelve. " _I raced back, brought her to the hospital. They took her appendix out. I called you ten, fifteen times from the waiting room. You didn't pick up. Next morning, you showed up at the hospital. You, uh... Well, it doesn't matter what you were doin'._ " Which basically meant Sam would be ashamed to know what he'd been doing. Had he gone out drinking? Found a woman to spend the night with? " _You weren't there. I chewed you out. But, look, man, it wasn't really you. Anna knows that. I know that. Any confusion she's got right now, it's just the fever messin' with her. She'll come back around as soon as she's back on her feet. You'll see_."

Sam didn't have the words to answer Dean with, so he didn't. He just sat in silence and digested all that information. He'd basically acted like a major douchebag the whole time she was sick and then, just when she'd needed him the most, he'd left her. And she'd woken up with an appendix that was ready to burst with nobody there to help her or tell her she would be okay.

Guilt began to eat at him as he realized what that must have been like for her. Sam had never had appendicitis. But Jess had gotten it not long after Sam had first asked her out. She'd mistaken it for a stomach bug, too. She hadn't even bothered going to the health center on campus. But her roommate had called the health center's emergency line just a couple days after Jess had first gotten sick because she was in so much pain she could barely move. She'd later told Sam that it had been some of the worst pain she'd ever felt in her life.

Sam couldn't imagine how Anna would have felt waking up immobilized by pain and completely by herself. _He_ would have been terrified. And he was 27. Anna wasn't even half his age. That phone call Dean had gotten... Sam had heard the change in his brother's voice when he recounted it, and thinking about the kind of fear Anna must have felt... He didn't want to think about it anymore, but he knew he wouldn't be able to stop thinking about any of this for days. Weeks, maybe.

" _Sammy..._ "

"I know," Sam said, trying to put some strength into his voice. He looked across the room at Anna again. Her pale blonde curls curtained her face, but he could tell she was sleeping peacefully just by her slow, quiet breathing and the way she hadn't stirred the entire time he'd been on the phone. He knew how Dean felt, and he knew what Dean was going to say. He knew his brother's stance on this whole business about his soulless self. But he didn't feel the same way, and he wouldn't no matter how many times Dean tried to convince him. "You know, I gotta be honest... It's insane to me that either one of you can even stand to be near me."

" _Sam, you gotta understand-_ "

"Dean, I know what you're gonna say," Sam snapped. "I've heard it all. But I don't give a crap about the technicalities. Yeah, I was walking around without a soul, but I was still _me_. Stop making excuses for me."

" _They're not excuses, Sam. You weren't you._ " It was an impasse that Sam recognized, and he knew Dean did too. This was the same wall they hit every time they spoke about last year. They simply couldn't agree. Dean was far too concerned about protecting Sam from everything, and Sam was more concerned with taking some responsibility, whatever guilt or pain that meant he had to take on with it. " _Listen, I'll be back late tonight, but I'll talk to Anna in the morning._ "

"It's not her fault-"

" _I know it's not her fault. I'm just gonna tell her it's really you now. Make sure she gets that what happened last year was a one time thing. But I'm tellin' you, man, that kid worships you. She doesn't believe for a second that the emotionless dickbag that hurt her was you. And neither do I. And someday, Sam, you're gonna buy that too_."

Sam sighed. He was tired of all of this, tired of the guilt and the shame, tired of having to argue against himself all the time because his family refused to believe he could ever be guilty of anything. "No," he answered, letting every bit of that weariness echo through the phone to his brother. "I'll talk to her."

He could feel Dean's hesitation, but he could also feel the moment Dean gave in. " _Fine._ " For a moment, there was only the sound of the Impala's engine rumbling on the other end. Then," _No more scratching, Sammy. I'll see you later._ "

"Yeah," Sam said. He hit the red x on the bottom of his phone screen and looked up at Anna again. He couldn't believe the lengths Dean kept going to defend his innocence when it turned out he'd neglected their own baby sister.

He watched Anna stir in her sleep and tried to fathom what must have been going through his soulless self's mind that he could have left her alone and vulnerable. Anna was the only person on the planet that Sam felt an urge to protect at all costs. He would fight for Dean, too, of course, at any cost. But it was different with Anna. She had an innocence and a vulnerability to her that Sam wanted her to keep. She was a kid, his kid sister. It was that simple.

()()()

"Hey," Sam greeted with a soft smile when Anna rolled out of bed a few hours later with a tangled mess of hair on her head but without the tinge of fever in her cheeks. It was probably temporary, just the Tylenol she'd taken after they went to the store this morning having taken effect, but if it meant she could get up and maybe feel well enough to have a conversation, Sam would take it. "Feel better?"

Anna let out a long breath. "Yeah," she said. "I'm tired, though."

"I bet. You slept for a while."

"I can't believe I slept in the middle of the day." Anna sat back down on the edge of her bed. "But my head doesn't hurt anymore, so it's fine, I guess."

Sam studied her for a second, trying to decide whether to broach the topic now or wait until later. He really wanted to be able to talk to her alone, though, and Dean would be returning before tomorrow. Later today Anna's fever could be back, and he wouldn't be able to talk to her if she wasn't feeling well enough. This was the best chance he would be likely to get. Maybe it was best to get it over with anyway... For some reason, though, Sam was dreading this talk.

As much as he wanted to understand Anna's side of this and reassure her that he was _him_ now, he was also afraid of opening up wounds for his sister-- and, if he was being honest, for himself. But it seemed to him that it was now or never, so, "Anna, can I, uh- Can we talk for a minute?"

It was obvious that his sudden serious tone startled her, because Anna looked up at him with something like uneasiness in her green eyes. "About what?" she asked carefully.

Sam stood up from the table and went to sit on the edge of the other bed in the room so the two were facing each other, knees nearly touching because there was so little space between the beds.

"What's wrong?" Anna asked again, looking wary. Sam could see that she knew this was going to be a serious conversation.

"I just wanted to ask you something."

"Okay," Anna drawled, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion.

"Last year," Sam started and immediately saw the reticence enter Anna's eyes. She didn't want him to know about last year any more than Dean did, but she was generally a lot worse at keeping secrets than their older brother. So she tended to shut completely down when the subject came up. She seemed to think it was best to offer absolutely nothing of herself rather than giving out tiny details but refusing to reveal any real information. But Sam just wanted a little honesty, and because he already knew what had happened thanks to Dean, all he needed from Anna now was to know how she remembered it and if it was still weighing on her mind.

"You're not supposed to worry about last year," she reminded him, face turned slightly downward even as her eyes were tilted up at him.

"Anna, I already talked to Dean, okay? He told me something that happened. When you got sick."

"What did he tell you?" Anna asked quietly.

"That I was a jerk. That I made fun of you and I left you by yourself when you really needed me there."

Anna shrugged a little. "I'm okay," she mumbled. "Nothing happened."

"Right," Sam said sarcastically and shook his head. "You were in so much pain you couldn't move and you had to wait for Dean to get back instead of going straight to the hospital because _I wasn't there_. But sure. Nothing happened." He realized a little belatedly that, though it was himself that he was angry with, it was Anna he seemed to be taking it out on. He sighed and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "I'm sorry, Ladybug. For yelling and for what happened a few months ago. I wouldn't do that to you. I mean, I can't even imagine what that must have felt like, and I'm so sorry that you had to experience it."

Anna's heart was bleeding out her eyes as she got up and sat down next to Sam. She put her hands on his arm and leaned up so she could see his face. "It wasn't you, Sam," she said resolutely. "I knew that even when it first happened. You weren't acting like you."

Sam looked up, face ridden with guilt, and caught his sister's eyes. "I'm sorry," he repeated. "You did not deserve that. Not in the slightest."

Anna looked down at her lap and scuffed her sock covered toes against the floor. "I guess. But you don't have to feel guilty," she added seriously, still not looking at him. "It's not something _you_ would do." There was an air about her like she was processing things as she spoke, or maybe it was more like she'd spent a long time processing things and was now being very careful to communicate them right. "I mean, the fact that you feel bad about it already says that, right? You didn't have a soul. I keep thinking about it, and that basically means you weren't a person. You didn't need the things people need. You didn't even sleep. And you didn't feel anything. You didn't feel happy or sad or anything. You weren't a person. So you weren't you. And none of the stuff you did can count that way. You know what I mean?"

It was deep stuff coming from a twelve year old, but considering who this twelve year old was, Sam wasn't so surprised. "I know," he told her, voice going a little hoarse. He couldn't understand how this conversation had turned so quickly into her comforting him instead of him reassuring her.

"This whole time today and yesterday, you did all the things you used to do before. That's what you're really like," Anna said decidedly. "At first I kept getting confused, but it's just because I got used to you being... him. But I'm getting used to you being you again, Sammy. I promise. I'm sorry that I made you feel bad when it wasn't really you."

"No, don't- God, Anna, don't apologize. I'm sorry you ever got hurt like that." It took everything in him not to say _Sorry that I hurt you like that_ , but since his guilt was only making Anna feel guilty, he had to refrain from expressing it out loud. "But, look, I just want to promise you that it's never, ever gonna happen again. You're safe with me, Ladybug. You always will be."

"I know, Sammy," she answered softly, eyes going a little dewy.

"Good," Sam said. Then again, "Good. Let's go get something for lunch while you're feeling a little better."

Anna scooted off the edge of the bed to stand and then grabbed Sam's hands to pull him up too. "No more soup," she pleaded. "I'm so tired of it."

"No more soup," Sam promised. "Dress warm."

"Yeah yeah yeah."

_la fin_


End file.
